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Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today's Business While Creating the Future

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Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today's Business While Creating the Future Dual Transformation How to Reposition Today’s Business While Creating the Future Scott D. Anthony, Clark G. Gilbert, and Mark W. Johnson ©2017 by Scott D. Anthony, Clark G. Gilbert, and Mark W. Johnson Adapted by permission of Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation ISBN: 978-1-633-692480 Estimated reading time of book: 4–5 hours KEY CONCEPTS • Disruption is the greatest challenge facing leaders today. It is both creative and destructive, displacing the existing market by offering new solutions to a wider, historically constrained market, often using a different business model. • Business leaders should not wait until their businesses are in decline—by then, it is too late. Instead, they should expect their business models to change, be ever vigilant of innovative upstarts and fringe markets, and have the courage to leap well before the platform burns. • To survive disruptive change and potentially emerge stronger, leaders must take the necessary steps to reposition their core businesses (transformation A), while driving new growth (transformation B). Transformations A and B should share a capabilities link of difficult-to-replicate assets that give businesses a competitive advantage. • Transformation A generates the money to fund transformation B, which, initially, will contribute only marginally to a company’s bottom line. Over time, the core business will be eclipsed by the new growth business, which, if successful, will generate a larger percentage of the company’s profit. • A culture of curiosity, experimentation, and the freedom to fail is needed if a company is to break out of the pre- dictable patterns that led to its success thus far. Opportunities pursued must, however, be carefully chosen after thorough quantitative and qualitative future-back analysis. • Leaders must manage expectations and relations between stakeholders, rallying them all behind a common core purpose. Transformations A and B should be kept separate, with a bias of resources toward B but A still be- ing made to feel important in driving B and the future of the business. Leaders must also convince doubtful board members and shareholders to stay the course, as it takes years for disruptive efforts to gain traction. Business Book Summaries® • Copyright © 2017 EBSCO Industries Inc. • www.ebscohost.com • All Rights Reserved 1 Dual Transformation Scott D. Anthony, Clark G. Gilbert, and Mark W. Johnson INTRODUCTION No one stays on top forever, and in today’s business environment, giants topple and upstarts change the game more rapidly than ever before. In Dual Transformation from Harvard Business Review Press, Scott D. Anthony, Clark G. Gilbert, and Mark W. Johnson teach business leaders how to turn threats into opportunities. Dual trans- formation requires a company to reposition its current business while also creating future business. It is a journey that requires courage, focus, and determination, but if navigated successfully, it can turn a legacy business on the brink of irrelevance into tomorrow’s market leader. The authors draw on their own experiences leading teams undergoing transformation, providing case studies of companies who have disrupted the market as well as companies who have reinvented themselves in the face of disruption. DISRUPTIVE SHOCK WAVES AND DUAL TRANSFORMATION Dual transformation describes two parallel change efforts in response to disruptive shock waves: one to reposi- tion the core business (transformation A), and the other to unlock new growth in a new market (transformation B). These transformations share a carefully stocked capabilities link of difficult-to-replicate assets that give incumbents an unfair advantage over upstarts. The assets may include proprietary technology, stores, brands, patents, or a company’s client network. To clearly delineate transformation A and transformation B, a leader must first define what his or her company currently does and how. The problem a company solves for customers is the what, and the way it uniquely solves that problem is the how. Transformation A solves an old problem in a new way, while transformation B solves a new but related problem in a new way. Adjacencies use existing capabilities to solve new problems, as when a company acquires other companies and their capabilities. To succeed at the difficult task of dual transformation, leaders must have the courage to choose well before the platform burns; the clarity to focus on a few high-potential opportunities; the curiosity to explore, even in the face of probable failure; and the conviction to persevere through crises of conflict, identity, and commitment. TRANSFORMATION A: REPOSITIONING THE CORE Deseret Media, Adobe, and Netflix all repositioned their core businesses by solving an existing problem in a new way. (The what did not change, but the how did.) By finding more effective, more efficient ways to address customer needs, these companies were able to increase their resilience and relevance in the face of disruptive change. To drive transformation A, an organization must do four things: Dual transformation 1. Define in detail what unique postdisruption job the company can do for describes two paral- its customers. lel change efforts in 2. Innovate the existing business model to deliver value against the job to response to disruptive be done. shock waves. 3. Determine and track new metrics. 4. Implement change aggressively, quickly, and comprehensively. If the effort is one of true transformation, relevant metrics will necessarily change. Top-level executives should be heavily involved, and outside talent can also help break down internal barriers to change. Business Book Summaries® • Copyright © 2017 EBSCO Industries Inc. • www.ebscohost.com • All Rights Reserved 2 Dual Transformation Scott D. Anthony, Clark G. Gilbert, and Mark W. Johnson TRANSFORMATION B: CREATING THE NEW Transformation B is about creating new growth businesses that capitalize on disruptive trends and find new ways to solve different problems. SingPost, the legacy mail carrier in Singapore, went from basic mail delivery to logistics and e-commerce. Amazon.com went from a retailer to an IT services company. Deseret Digital went from an online replica of the print business to a collection of communities and marketplaces. To identify and pursue transformation B opportunities, an organization can follow these keys to success : • Identify constrained markets, a problem that a significant number of customers want to solve but have thus far been unable to because of a lack of resources, such as specialized skills, time, or money. • Break down the consumption barriers that keep cheaper, more convenient solutions out of reach. • Iteratively develop new business models required to serve the new market and power the future. • Use partnerships, acquisitions, and new hires to succeed against a new competitive set. Transformation B should involve a more prudent, iterative, test-and-learn To get ahead of dis- approach, as two variables, the what and the how, are changing. ruptive change, lead- ers must act long THE CAPABILITIES LINK BETWEEN A AND B before convincing The benefit that big companies have over upstarts is existing assets of scale. data has arrived. If they can combine these difficult-to-replicate assets with the right amount of entrepreneurism, they can turn the innovator’s dilemma into opportunity. Dual transformation is about expanding into markets that were previously difficult to serve, enabled by a capa- bilities link between transformations A and B. Capabilities must be carefully chosen from A to provide true value to B and actively managed with a bias toward B. Implementing a comprehensive portfolio management system, exchange teams whose objectives benefit both A and B, and transfer pricing on capabilities will help strategically manage the capabilities link and keep trans- formations A and B separate and distinct. Top leadership must arbitrate between transformations A and B, with a bias toward B to offset the inherent bias B already faces due to being new and relatively unprofitable com- pared to A. THE COURAGE TO CHOOSE To get ahead of disruptive change, leaders must act long before convincing data has arrived. The early warning signs of change come in three stages: 1. Declining customer loyalty and significant venture capital investment create circumstances that favor dis- ruptive change. 2. Policy changes, new entrants at the market fringes, and changing customer preferences and habits are cata- lysts that signal the beginning of disruptive impact. 3. Impact occurs when a competitor develops a disruptive business model and incumbent revenue growth slows, necessitating cost cutting to protect profit margins. To spot these warning signs, leaders should look to the fringes of their industries, watch small but rapidly growing ventures closely, and think about the possible future by involving outsiders and assessing the cost of inaction. Netflix, Turner Entertainment Network, and Aetna are examples of companies that chose to change before the need was obvious. Business Book Summaries® • Copyright © 2017 EBSCO Industries Inc. • www.ebscohost.com • All Rights Reserved 3 Dual Transformation Scott D. Anthony, Clark G. Gilbert, and Mark W. Johnson THE CLARITY TO FOCUS Strategic clarity involves choosing what to do as well as what not to do. John F. Kennedy set a specific time- bound goal, to send a man to the moon by the end of the 1960s. To identify their “moonshoots,” leaders must calculate their growth gaps (the difference between current potential and the desired future state), determine goals and boundaries (who will be served, how, and at what cost), and align on a handful of high-potential opportunities validated as being compelling and feasible. A future-back mindset will help leaders envision what their companies will look like postdisruption. Traditional approaches to strategy are present-forward; they rely heavily on data from the past and as a result envision a business that is similar to today’s. In times of disruption, this approach underplays the biggest threats and obscures the biggest opportunities. Future-back has both a quantitative and qualitative component, with the latter being more important.
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